Sir Georg Solti (1912 – 1997) was one of the 20^th cen­tury’s most bril­liant con­duct­ors and a lead­ing fig­ure of mu­sic­al cul­ture world-wide. Very few con­duct­ors of world renown may look back on a life packed with achieve­ment but Sir Georg Solti.

Born and raised in Hun­gary - György stud­ied pi­ano, com­pos­i­tion and con­duct­ing with Bartók, Dohnányi, Kodály and Leo Wein­er at Bud­apest’s Liszt Academy - the young Solti spends his form­at­ive years as a con­duct­or in Ger­man-speak­ing coun­tries.

In 1937, To­scanini se­lec­ted him as his as­sist­ant at the Salzburg Fest­iv­al. Be­fore the out­break of World War II, Sir Georg went to Switzer­land as a refugee. Fol­low­ing the war 1946, he was in­vited by the Amer­ic­an mil­it­ary gov­ern­ment to con­duct a per­form­ance of Beeth­oven’s Fi­delio in Mu­nich. Soon he be­came Gen­er­al Mu­sic Dir­ect­or in Mu­nich and Frank­furt. Later be­ing a ma­ture and ex­per­i­enced maes­tro, he ap­peared as well in Vi­enna, Bayreuth and Ber­lin. In 1961, he be­came Mu­sic­al Dir­ect­or of Cov­ent Garden for a ten-year ten­ure.

But it was in Chica­go that mu­sic­al his­tory was made. Solti's "Chica­go sound" be­come a syn­onym for ex­cel­lence. The big, de­cis­ive, ex­cit­ing style was in­stantly re­cog­niz­able. Over the next 22 years (from 1969 to 1991), to­geth­er with the Chica­go Sym­phony Or­ches­tra, he con­duc­ted a total of 999 per­form­ances, made more than 50 re­cord­ings, re­ceived 32 Grammy Awards, made count­less tri­umphant tours, and all the world took no­tice.

Fea­tur­ing:
Valer­ie Solti
Valery Ger­giev
Chris­toph von Dohnányi
Sir Peter Jo­nas
Clem­ens Hells­berg
Ewald Markl
and many more as well as sev­er­al mu­sic­al ex­cerpts con­duc­ted by Sir Georg Solti

From the Dir­ect­or of Her­bert von Ka­ra­jan: Maes­tro for the Screen and Car­los Kleiber - I am lost to the World: Georg Wübbolt.